The market for sports-bikes has been in decline for quite a while. There was once an era when these were the most popular category of bikes, as riders emulated their heroes on the race track. These days, the top-selling motorcycle genres are the Adventure bikes and the Retros. So when Yamaha first introduced the YZF-R7 sports bike, we wondered why they’ve done that. Is it an anachronism or a calculated move to reinvigorate the sports-bike genre, or maybe something else entirely?
In compiling this article, we would like to thank Yamaha Canada for very kindly providing us with a brand new R7. We had the bike for just over a week, during which time we rode it in a wide variety of conditions. We took it on long distance highway stretches, we rode it in town, we threw it around in the twisties, we rode it at night, and we even did a spell where we deliberately rode it in the rain. All told, we racked up a fair few kilometres in order to bring you a comprehensive insight on what the R7 is really like to live with.